University System of MD to Inaugurate UMBI President

October 25, 2000

UNIVERSITY SYSTEM OF MD TO INAUGURATE UMBI PRESIDENT

ROCKVILLE, Md.--The University System of Maryland will inaugurate the second president of the University of Maryland Biotechnology Institute, microbiologist and ecologist Jennie Hunter-Cevera, Ph.D., on November 9 -10 with a series of events (schedule below) that will also celebrate recent accelerated support for UMBI technology.

Hunter-Cevera brings over 20 years of experience in business-academic relations, at a time when international interest is running high to market UMBI's technologies, including preventative AIDS vaccines, urban fish farming methods, poultry vaccines and genomic protein structure data for advanced drug design.

"Jennie Hunter-Cevera's wealth of knowledge and expertise will help Maryland maintain its stance as a premier center of innovation and growth in the biotech industry," says, Maryland Governor Parris N. Glendening.

Donald Langenberg, chancellor of the University System of Maryland (USM), adds," She has brought to Maryland a rare combination of scientific expertise, business sense and political acumen. I expect Dr. Hunter-Cevera will catalyze the vigorous growth of Maryland's biotechnology industry."

With five research and education centers in the Baltimore/Washington corridor, UMBI operates on a 1985 state mandate to stimulate economic development in biotechnology. Maryland is generally recognized as having the nation's third largest biotechnology sector, with $1.17 billion investments in private companies, over 42,000 employees and over 250 companies. (source: non-profit MdBio Inc.)

"I am very proud to say we are now entering a second phase of UMBI's growth, a technology transfer phase," says Hunter-Cevera. "It is very exciting that, after 15 years of solid research results, we are beginning to focus more resources and energy on fulfilling our mandate." Hunter-Cevera replaces founding president Rita R. Colwell, Ph.D., who left UMBI to become director of the National Science Foundation.

Hunter-Cevera was most recently head of the Center for Environmental Biotechnology and director of the Department of Environmental Biology and Biochemistry for the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), University of California, part of the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) national laboratory system. She was also previously with E.R. Squibb in Princeton, NJ; Cetus Corporation in Emeryville, Calif.; and ran a consulting company specializing in biotechnology, agricultural and industrial microbiology, bioremediation and pharmaceuticals.

Former colleague, William A. Barletta, director, Accelerator & Fusion Research, LBNL, says Hunter-Cevera had been instrumental in applying biotechnology solutions to assessing how to "bioremediate" a wide range of potential and actual environmental crises and threats. "Jennie could work across many scientific disciplines and always in a highly enthusiastic and effective way to bring in and coordinated new users of our facilities," says Barletta.

At UMBI, the large and environmentally fragile Chesapeake Bay watershed serves as a primary research and technology model in marine studies. Researchers find ways to use microbes to bioremediate toxic PCB's, mercury compounds and other hazardous substances in the marine environment, and for developing technologies for control of toxic Pfiesteria and diseases of fin and shellfish.

Also, in her inaugural address on November 10, Hunter-Cevera will announce other UMBI technology advances in commercializing marine fish farming in non-polluting warehouse conditions in Baltimore, a new multi-million dollar grant for developing and implementing AIDS vaccines in developing countries, and discoveries in "proteomics," or protein structure innovations for genomics-era drug design (a logical extension of the Human Genome Project.). She will also announce a major expansion plan for protein structure and genomics studies at UMBI's Center for Advanced Research in Rockville, Md., and educational initiatives too enhance Maryland's biotechnology curriculum for K-16 students.

The media is invited to all inaugural events.

On Thursday, November 9, inaugural festivities will begin with a scientific symposium, "Advancing the Frontiers of Biotechnology," from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m., at the University System of Maryland's Shady Grove campus.

On 2 p.m., Friday, November 10, Langenberg and USM Board of Regents Chair Nathan Chapman will conduct the official inauguration ceremony at Shady Grove campus. There will be a reception at 3:30 p.m. An Inaugural Gala will then be held at the Marriott Hotel, Inner Harbor in Baltimore from 8 p.m. to 12 a.m. The dinner and dancing event will be called "West Coast Meets East Coast" in honor of Dr. Hunter-Cevera's distinguished biotechnology career in California before being selected as the second UMBI president.

Scheduled speakers at the ceremony include Colwell; Langenberg; Barletta; U.S. Congresswoman Constance Morella (Md. 8th district), Major Riddick, Governor Glendening's Chief of Staff; Maryland state Senator Ida G. Ruben; 20th district; Maryland Delegate Nancy Kopp, 16th district; Maryland Delegate Howard "Pete" Rawlings, 40th district; Robert Gallo, director of UMBI's Human Virology Institute; and several prominent biotechnology industry leaders.

Directions to USM, Shady Grove from the Capital Beltway: I-270 north to exit 8, Shady Grove Road west. Follow 1.5 miles. Cross Darnstown Road. Turn right onto Gudelsky Way and take immediate left to Gudelsky Drive. Follow to parking area. Visit the UMBI inaugural page at www.umbi.umd.edu.